About Aiden Darne
Aiden Darné, Global Head of Shutterstock Studios, has described the company's data licensing business as a significant growth area, stating that large technology companies pay Shutterstock between $25 million and $50 million a day for metadata associated with its images. He noted that this provides a copyright-cleared alternative to scraping the internet for machine learning data. Darné also discussed Shutterstock's approach to generative AI, including the launch of a text-to-3D platform in partnership with Nvidia. He said the company is focused on "ethical AI," aiming to ensure representation and diversity in generated content and to compensate contributors whose work is used for machine learning.
Darné has highlighted the role of Shutterstock Studios in producing custom content for brands, such as a campaign for the pharmaceutical company ViiV that created new, documentary-style stock assets of people living with HIV. He has also discussed the use of virtual production technology, including XR stages, for commercial workcars, and described the company's acquisition of GIPHY as part of its expansion beyond its core stock content business.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Aiden Darne's recent appearances.
Browse all interviews →
Transcript (11 segments)
I
Interviewer0:02
Hello Rose Reef, we are here at the Circular De Oro with Justin and Aiden.
Yes, yeah, and they talk about, uh, in a conference about virtual productions and metaverse, right?
That's correct. It was a pleasure. Well, welcome, congratulations for the talk. It was a very interesting talk, and I wanted to ask you, for those who don't know, what is the metaverse? How would you describe it?
A
Aiden Darne0:44
Well, if you've ever seen a kid, as simple as you can, yes, the metaverse is basically a digital version of the physical world. It can be a place that, you know, it could be a new place you've never been, but what it really is is a place where people can connect through the internet and share experiences together.
I
Interviewer1:07
Right, okay, okay, yeah, sure. So in the conference, you mentioned that virtual productions are like a more eco-friendly way of making advertisement and marketing and all that. What are other perks that you find?
A
Aiden Darne1:32
For sure, but thank you for having us firstly. Yeah, virtual production is something that we have been really leveraging for commercial production in lots of different types of ways. Obviously it was started on The Mandalorian, but the benefits of it are, you know, in addition of course to being the most eco-friendly version of production, and I mean eco-friendly because it takes a lot less people, a lot less driving, a lot less movement, a lot less physical sets being built. So that's one massive bonus. Another bonus of it is the unlimited levels of creativity that you can take it to. We always kind of anecdotally say, if you can, really the only limitation is your imagination. We can take you to worlds, we can take you to planets, to forests, the deserts, and into different types of surreal worlds and things. So the benefit, the biggest benefit is the creative, I would say. As a new technology, it's enabling all of us to do things that we were otherwise unable to do.
I
Interviewer2:41
A question for both of you. What do you think is next? Like here, from here to maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, what is next with this virtual productions and metaverse?
J
Justin2:58
Well, I think one area is that it's becoming more accessible. Virtual production requires still big LED sets, these big screen TVs that do cost a lot of money. The cost of those systems is going down. As it goes down, that means we can take it out of movies and put it into TV, advertisements, in all sorts of different areas. So I think virtual production is going to become more accessible to more people and become a medium that more people use. For the metaverse particularly, I think that just more and more people will start experimenting, and it's very difficult to say what's going to happen tomorrow, but one thing's for sure is that it's going to be interesting. There's going to be new people coming in, but I think the real potential is when we make it so easy to build these worlds, you don't need to be an expert, you don't need to be an artist. That's when we're going to see the real potential, when everyone can become a creator, and that's coming in the near future.
A
Aiden Darne3:59
Thank you. You're welcome. No, agreed totally. Yeah, the accessibility of the technology is the most important part to all of this, for it to be able to use across all different types of use cases, for all different types of creators. And virtual production sounds scary and massive and expensive, but it also covers simple AR and VR activations, simple, you know, a little, it's much smaller types of things than a massive volume stage. So it's already being used by creators, individual creators, and that, I think to Justin's point, is where it will go further, for it to be even more accessible.
I
Interviewer4:38
Thank you for your time, thank you for the conference, and well, congratulations, really.
A
Aiden Darne4:42
Thank you, thank you so much. It's a pleasure.
